Interview with the Turkish website haber10

02/04/07

Dear Rabbi,

I am a muslim turkish writer and would like to thank you lots and lots for your bravery,proudy behaves and pronunciation. We,muslims are always very sensitive to all of the reliqions , never make any insult to any holy symbol of jewish people..I have lots of jewish frieds, who are living in 0stanbul for long years and very sad for zionist politics So we only hate United States politics , zionism and zionist israel goverment but all the jewish people against this politics are always our friends and will always stay as our friends...

hope God bless you forever
Thank you very much in behalf of 0slam

We follow closely your site and we share your ideas related to Sionism and
Anti-semitism sir.

We are very appreciative of your efforts to cast light on the issue. We
regard as all Jewish people that are against the Sionism and state of Israel are brothers. we ,
As Muslims, support your efforts in our heart.

If possible, we'd like you to give an interview *to include in our website
named** **www.haber10.com*

If you would accept our request, we would be very happy.

Thanking you in anticipation for your kind reply

Yours faithfully

Peren Birsaygili & M.Surmen

We would be happy to give you an interview. Will it be written or audio? Let me know what your
questions will be.

Hersh Lowenthal at Jews Against Zionism

Dear Mr. Lowenthal,

First, thank you for accepting to have an interview with us.

We believe that Turkish people will be interested in this interview and also it will be very benefical to us.

* Could you give me some information about your activities? What is the main purpose of your organization?

Our organization is called True Torah Jews Against Zionism, and we have two main purposes: 1) To spread the true Torah view about exile, redemption and the State of Israel to Jews who are ignorant of it. Our belief is that the Jewish people, which has been in exile among various nations since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 69 of the Common Era, must continue to live in exile until G-d sends us the messiah. Exile means that we may not claim any rights to the Holy Land, or make any attempts at political sovereignty. We are forbidden to wage wars against any other people. The messiah will be a prophet who performs miracles and brings all Jews to keep the Torah, and his status as the messiah will be accepted by all men. Even when the messiah comes there will be no conquest or expulsion of other peoples. All the nations will live in peace with each other and with the Jewish nation, the Jewish nation will be restored to its ancestral land, and the messiah will be their king. Jews must only wait and take no political or military action. This is not only our belief; it has always been the belief of all Jews, everywhere. Only recently, through the efforts of the Zionists, have Jews begun to forget these beliefs.

We reach Jews through our website (jewsagainstzionism.com), through printed leaflets we distribute, and through books we publish. In addition to the existing books on Zionism which we make available on the website, we are also publishing some books of our own. A commentary on the Torah in English, showing its true meaning and focusing on where the Zionists have gone wrong, is soon to appear. We have also completed a 500-page Hebrew book detailing the sources in the Bible, Talmud and rabbinic writings that show why Zionism is wrong. We hope to eventually translate it into English as well.

Our hope and goal is that all Jews realize that Zionism is against the Torah, repent, and eventually dismantle the State of Israel and live peacefully in exile. Not only will this spare Jewish and non-Jewish lives, but it will be a fulfillment of the Torah law, which is of great importance to us. The Jewish people is one unit, we all feel responsible for each other, and therefore we are not satisfied that we ourselves keep the Torah we want all Jews everywhere to do so.

2) Our organization also attempts to reach the non-Jewish world. Since the Zionist state claims to represent world Jewry, and many people who oppose the state eventually begin to hate Jews by association, we try to explain to the world that Zionism is not Judaism. Zionism is a heretical breakaway movement from Judaism. We don't want anyone to blame Jews, and especially religious Jews, for what the State of Israel does.

* How many organizations are there established by the Jews that are against the policies of Zionist and the state of Israel and since when is the above-mentioned organizations or groups pursuing their activities?

Before I talk about anti-Zionist organizations, let me give you some demographic figures, since most anti-zionist Jews are not part of any organized group. Today about 5 million Jews live in the
State of Israel, of which about 20% keep the laws of the Torah. Many of these, however, are somewhat ignorant and rely on flawed interpretations of Torah law. That is why you may hear about "religious" Jews who advocate holding onto every piece of the territories and fighting for it. About 10% of the population are "hareidim" which means more strictly religious Jews who follow the true interpretation of the Torah. These people share our beliefs that any Jewish state before the coming of messiah is a sin and a serious error.

In America, England, Belgium and other communities there are perhaps another 500,000 hareidim; thus altogether there are about 1 million non-Zionist religious Jews in the world. Of those there is a smaller group of about 150,000 who advocate open opposition and struggle against Zionist ideology. This includes the communities of Satmar, Munkacz, Stolin, the Brisker schools of Talmudic study, and the Eidah Haredis the religious Jews of Jerusalem who are descended from the community that lived in the Old City in the 1800s, before Zionist colonization began. These last 150,000 are the group whose views our organization represents, although in a more general way we represent all non- Zionist Jews.

A few words about Satmar, the community with which we are most closely affiliated. The name "Satmar" comes from the town in Hungary in which our most revered leader, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum (1887-1979), was rabbi before World War II. After the War he settled in New York and built around himself a large community of followers with their own network of schools and synagogues. He was a great scholar, author and charismatic personality, and he dedicated much of his effort to fighting Zionism. In every book he wrote, he took care to show his listeners that founding a state is a terrible violation of Jewish law and brings no benefit to the Jewish people, only makes their situation worse physically and spiritually.

Now, about organized anti-Zionism. Already in the time of Herzl, the rabbis of Europe took a clear stand against the Zionist agenda. A collection of letters from rabbis against Zionism called Ohr Layesharim was published in the year 1900, and later two other similar books appeared, Daas Harabanim and Tikun Olam.

The Orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel was founded in 1909, and one of their purposes was to fight Zionism. However, Agudath Israel later became so big and encompassed such a wide variety of Jews that they began to lean more and more toward the Zionist agenda colonizing Palestine and so on and so the more religious Jews stayed away from Agudah. Most of the members of the Eidah Chareidis of Jerusalem broke off from Agudah in the 1930's and 40's, with the decisive vote in 1945. In 1949 when the state of Israel held its first election, the split became accentuated when the Eidah forbade its members to vote in the election while Agudah permitted it. The anti-Zionist ideologues of the Eidah became known as the Neturei Karta, meaning "Keepers of the City". Neturei Karta today has branches in the United States and England, and maintains its own website (nkusa.org).

At the same time in America, throughout the 50's, 60's and 70's, Rabbi Teitelbaum preached and wrote against the Zionists and their state. After his passing in 1979 this work did not continue, but he had left his mark on his followers. He founded the Central Rabbinical Council of the United States and Canada, which continued to organize demonstrations in New York against the Zionists. The Satmar community also continued to send millions of dollars to support schools in the Holy Land that refuse to accept money from the Israeli government. Within the last ten years, taking advantage of the new technology available, Satmar activists founded True Torah Jews Against Zionism as a means of reaching out and educating the public.

* Could you give us a detailed account of Zionism? From where does it take root in? You acknowledge that there are many people and groups that identify Free-masonary or Zionism with Judaism. What would you like to tell about that with reference to Torah and Talmudic Literature ?

Zionism was a movement founded by Jews who had left Judaism behind. Some of them, such as Herzl, were seeking a solution to the persecution of Jews in various countries in which they lived.
Others, such as the followers of the Russian Jewish "enlightenment" movement, were more interested in reforming the Jewish people, discarding the old religion and founding a new nation in a new land speaking a new language. Still others were followers of Marx and his socialist doctrines.

However, all these groups would probably not have succeeded in capturing the enthusiasm of the mainstream Jewish people, had it not been for the fact that they focused their nationalistic aspirations on Palestine, the ancient land of the Jews. The Jewish religion places a lot of stress on those ancient times in the Holy Land we mention the Temple offerings in our prayers, many commandments of the Torah can only be fulfilled there, and we are constantly hoping and praying for the coming of the messiah, at which time the Jews will once again live in the Holy Land. So it is not surprising that Zionism struck a chord with the Jewish people and many of them, even some religious ones, joined the Zionists. These Jews were ignorant and did not realize that what we are hoping for is the redemption of G-d and the messiah, when all of mankind will be at peace. We are not hoping for any kind of conquest of the land, and Jews are strictly forbidden to wage wars against other peoples.

* What is the anti-semitism? Is it to be an enemy of Jewish? Since Arab Nations are too descending from Shem, the eldest son of Prophet Noah (PBUH), they are Semitic.

Anti-Semitism is a term coined relatively recently within the past 200 years for the ancient phenomenon of hatred and persecution of the Jews. If you read the book of Exodus you will see that
Jews were persecuted and enslaved in Egypt. Haman, advisor to the Persian emperor Ahasuerus, planned to kill all the Jews. The Syrian Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes passed decrees against the observance of Jewish law. After Christianity became a powerful world force, a new reason for anti- Semitism was created the Jews were accused of rejecting their messiah and killing him. The Jews of Europe suffered from the Crusades, the Inquistion and many other pogroms fomented by the leaders of Christianity. The worst and most recent manifestation of Jew-hatred was, of course, the Nazi's murder of nearly six million Jews in Poland, Russia, Hungary and all of Eastern Europe.

You are right that the term is not proper since the Semites really includes all people descended from Shem. In the same sense, the term Hebrew is inaccurate since it implies all descendants of Eber, the great-grandson of Shem. That is the way language is words develop and take on new meanings.

Recently the Zionists have exploited the accusation of anti-Semitism to try to silence their opponents, and we believe that is wrong. The conflict between the Zionists and the Palestinians is a political and military conflict over a piece of land, not a conflict of religions or races, and just because someone sides with the Palestinians does not mean he is against Jews.

Anti-Semitism is not the cause for opposition to the Israeli state, but it is definitely a result. That is, because of their opposition to the state, many people have undoubtedly become anti- Semitic. This is because they mistakenly associate the state and its goals and actions with the Jewish people. But this could not be farther from the truth. The authentic Jews those who study and keep the Torah and Talmud are against the state and have no part in its actions. This is why our organization's work is so crucial at this time: by educating people about the difference between Judaism and Zionism, we are preventing the dangerous growth of anti-Semitism.

* If we regard as the emergence of modern political Zionism in the late nineteenth century is a beginning, which the first Zionist Congress held by Theodor Herzl in Basel in 1897, what differences are there between the desired goal which has been reached, and the result? Do you think the State of Israel, as someone called, is a state 'behind an iron-wall' ?

You ask about the difference between the original goals of Zionism and the results. The differences are quite striking. The original Zionists wanted to save Jewry from persecution and danger, but the country they created turns out to be the most dangerous place for Jews to live today. They wanted to save Jewish lives, but maintaining the state has cost them over 28,000 Jewish lives. This is only proof of our belief that one cannot outsmart G-d, and if G-d wants us in exile we cannot and may not try to better our situation by ending the exile with our own actions. We must wait for G-d to act.

Part of the problem is that the Zionists themselves in the early years were very naïve about their project. They thought that no one would mind if they moved into Palestine and set up a state. They did not realize that there was another people living there before. This naivete spread to the religious Jewish world as well, and therefore some religious Jews who colonized Palestine did not see themselves as waging a war against the Palestinians. When the secular Zionists finally did wake up to the realization that they were going to face violent opposition, they had already gone too far, and they began to arm themselves and prepare for war.
This took the some of the religious non-Zionist community by surprise, for although some of them supported colonization of the land, none of them supported waging a war.

Another important difference is that the original Zionists wanted to create a secular substitute for Judaism. Instead of keeping the Torah, Jews would now live in their own land and speak Hebrew and that would be enough to be consider them Jewish. They could commit every sin in the world, as long as they had a land and a language. This was their vision, and they unfortunately put a lot of work into implementing it. But the rule in Jewish history is that ideologies opposed to the Torah die out. A religious Jew sees to it that his children and grandchildren and so on are all religious Jews, but the secular Jew does not care about this, and his grandchildren will often not be Jewish at all, or if they are, they will not carry on his ideology. Thus Zionism as a secular ideology is dying out. Jews who don't believe in the Torah are getting tired of fighting for a land promised to them by the Torah. They are almost ready to give up. Today it is the religious Zionists we have to worry about. They are the ones we are trying to reach and educate. They already believe in the Torah, and it's only a matter of showing them what the Torah really says.

* We commemorate with respect the people who were murdered by Nazis during World War II. During World War II, we know very well the Jews of Europe were the most numerous of the victims of the Holocaust in what the Nazis called the " Final Solution of the Jewish Question" and other minority members also perished in the Holocaust. Who are responsible for the Holocaust? Could you explain the key role of Zionists played in the Holacaust that led to tragical results? How many Jewish people were victimizated by Nazis as a part of Zionist Plan according to your reasearchs?

Who was responsible for the Holocaust? Hitler and the Nazis. Hitler was unwilling to give up his genocide of the Jews for any price or bribe. It is even arguable that he lost the war because he diverted important resources and manpower to murdering the Jews, and because he invaded Russia too early with the purpose of murdering the Russian Jews. His generals pleaded with him for trains and supplies for the front, but he ordered the trains to be used to carry Jews to the death camps. The other Nazi officials also agreed with the program but they were not as strong about it, and could be bribed. For example, the SS officer Wisliceny was in charge of Slovakian Jewry, and Rabbi Michael Weissmandel was able to bribe him continuously throughout the war not to deport the Jews. Finally, in the fall of 1944 he was unable to continue and the Slovakian Jews were all taken to Auschwitz. He had plans to bribe other officers and save many more people, but the Zionists refused to send him the money. Eichmann, who was placed in charge of Hungarian Jewry, agreed to spare them all (about 800,000) for a bribe from the Zionists. Eichmann sent a Jew named Joel Brand as an emmisary to the Zionist leadership in Istanbul to ask them for "trucks for blood": the Jews of Hungary would be spared in exchange for one thousand tons of tea, one thousand tons of coffee, and ten thousand trucks. But Moshe Sharet, Yitzchok Greenbaum and the other leaders of the Zionist Agency decided that it would be undesirable to invest any efforts to save these Jews, because it might displease their British allies and interfere with their plans for a Jewish state in the Holy Land. So they decided to conceal Brands mission. They lured him across the border from Turkey into Syria, the British took him to a prison in Egypt, and he languished there for months with his message undelivered, until all the Jews of Hungary were burned up.

In general, the Zionists were mainly concerned about immigration to Palestine, when they could have been saving Jews by bringing them to other places. They controlled the major Jewish organizations at that time, and a lot of money was at their disposal.

Zionists claim that by working for a state they were trying to save Jews, and if they had had a state before WWII they would have been able to rescue everyone. But the truth is the opposite: by working for a state they aggravated the local population of Palestine. The British, not wanting to anger the Palestinians, severely limited Jewish immigration. If the Jews had had no nationalistic aspirations, there would have been no rioting and violence, and the British would surely have let many more Jews into Palestine.

* Do you think the Young Jewish Generation in Israel is growing away from the principles of Torah because of the policies implemented by the Israel government?

Is the young generation growing away from Torah? I think that has happened long ago, in the early years of the state. The European Jewish Zionists had already turned their backs on Torah long
before the founding of the state, and when the state opened its doors to the Sephardic Jews (Jews from Middle-Eastern countries) they made sure that the children of these Jews got no Torah education and grew up as secularized as possible.

Nowadays that battle is over, secular Zionism is in decline, and many Jews in the state of Israel are returning to Torah. Now it is imperative to educate the Torah Jews and show them that Zionism is against the Torah.

* Today, we know that you are worrying about Genocide being perpetrated by the state of Israel. How is your relationship with the religious man of Palestin and the official representatives of the government of Palestin?
Is the Palestine alone in its struggle against the cruel western emperyalism and Zionism?

Really we are a religious organization, not a political one, and we don't maintain political contacts of any kind. We do try to reach the Palestinians and let them know that we sympathize with all victims of Zionism, Jewish and non-Jewish. We would like to reach more Muslims and maintain some sort of dialogue so that both sides should realize that true Jews and true Muslims both want to live in peace with one another, as they lived for centuries, and that today's violence and war is caused by politicians, extremists and misguided people.This is why we are pleased that you are giving us this publicity in the Muslim world.